August 4, 2025 • 14 mins
Has bedtime turned into a nightly battle for you and your child who just can’t go to sleep?
So many parents and kids are waking up tired. We’re taking a look at how hard it is for so many households across Australia to get a good night’s rest.
And in headlines today, new protest laws may be introduced, or repealed, following the pro-Palestine rally across the Sydney Harbour Bridge; Krissy Barrett will make history as the first woman to lead the Australian Federal Police; Video has been released showing convicted killer Erin Patterson speaking with detectives at her dining table, nearly a month after her murder conviction; Starting August 20, the US will launch a pilot program allowing consular officers to require bonds of up to $23,200 AUD for certain tourist and business visa applicants; Australia’s beloved kids’ show Bluey may offer more than just entertainment, with experts saying it helps children develop important resilience skills.
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CREDITS
Hosts: Sasha Tannock & Tahli Blackman
Guests: Dr Jen Walsh & Dr Cele Richardson Centre for Sleep Science, University of Western Australia
Audio Producer: Lu Hill
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mumma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hey, I'm Sashatannic. This is Muma MIA's twice daily news podcast,
The Quickie. Has bedtime turned into a nightly struggle for
you and your child who just can't sleep. So many
parents and kids are waking up tired. We're taking a
look at how hard it is for households across Australia
to get a good night's rest. Before we get there.
(00:42):
He's Tarlie Blackman with the latest from The Quickie newsroom
for Tuesday August five.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks Sasha. New protest laws may be introduced or repealed
after the pro Palestine rally across the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Despite police opposition, the Supreme Court allowed the protest to
go ahead, prompting concern from New South Wales Premier Chris Mens,
who says future bridge protests must not become the norm.
While not ruling out new laws, Minn said any changes
(01:08):
must be considered carefully. Federal Opposition leader Susan Lee urged
tougher action, warning of major city disruptions. Prime Minister Anthony
Alberenezi backed peaceful protests as a democratic riot, saying Australians
want people to stop killing each other. They want peace
and security, they don't want conflict brought here. Similar pro
Palestine protests have been held globally, including London, Berlin and Athens,
(01:33):
often calling for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid and an end
to Israeli military action in Gaza. Protest organizers say more
rallies will take place nationwide on August twenty four, but
deny plans to march on the bridge again soon. Christy
Barrett will make history as the first woman to lead
the Australian Federal Police after being appointed the agency's ninth commissioner.
(01:56):
Barrett's twenty five year career has seen her rise from
a young administrative assistant in Melbourne to a seasoned law
enforcement leader involved in major investigations including the Balley bombings
and deployments to the Solomon Islands. She will take over
for Rhese Kershel, who is stepping down in early October
after six years in the role, citing that toll the
(02:16):
job has taken on family life and his desire to
spend more time with loved ones. Barrett says one of
her main priorities will be ensuring the AFP has a
healthy work for supporting officers both on and off duty
as they protect the nation. Video has been released showing
convicted killer Aaron Patterson speaking with detectives at her dining
table nearly a month after her murder of conviction. Another
(02:38):
clip shows Patterson disposing of a food dehydrator at a
Victorian rubbish tip, and both videos were key evanans during
her eleven week trial in Morewell. On July seven, Aaron
Patterson was found guilty of murdering Don and Gale Patterson
and Heather Wilkinson, and of the attempted murder of Heather's husband,
Ian Wilkinson. The court heard she deliberately served the victims
(02:59):
beef Wellington's laced with deadly deathcap mushrooms at her home
in July twenty twenty three. She now faces life in
prison and will return to court for sentencing. Starting August twenty,
the US will launch a pilot program allowing consular officers
to require bonds for up to twenty three thousand, two
hundred AUD for certain tourists and business visa applicants. The
(03:21):
program targets visitors from countries with high rates of visa
overstays or insufficient screening information. Applicants may be required to
pay bonds of approximately seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty
dollars fifteen thousand, five hundred dollars or twenty three thousand,
two hundred dollars AUD, with fifteen thousand, five hundred AUD
generally expected. The program will run for about one year.
(03:44):
This move is part of broader efforts under President Donald
Trump's administration to curb illegal immigration, including previous travel bands
on nineteen countries. A similar program started in late twenty twenty,
but was not fully implemented due to the pandemic. Australia's
beloved kids show Bluey may offer more than just entertainment,
with experts saying it helps children develop important resilience skills
(04:08):
sq Universe. The mental health practitioner Kelly Bowl analyzed one
hundred and fifty episodes and found that half inquded lessons
on coping and emotional strength, often taught by Blue's parents.
She says resilience helps us handle life's challenges, and building
it in childhood supports mental health throughout life. The research
team encourages parents to watch alongside their kids and discuss
(04:31):
how to apply these lessons. So next time your child
asks for just one more episode, you can feel pretty
good about saying.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yes, thanks Charlie. Next, we're talking about kids' sleep issues
and how tough it can be to get a good
night's sleep. Is bedtime a nightly battle for you and
your child? Endless books, trips to the bathroom or glasses
of water, the constant coaxing, calming, negotiating, and still they
(05:02):
just won't go to sleep. Perhaps you've woken up with
a start in the middle of the night to find
your five year old eyes balling you in the darkness
and that sinking feeling that you've just lost the next
two hours of precious rest. Or maybe you have a
super early waker. Like clockwork, they appear in your room
at four thirty every morning before the first signs of light.
(05:25):
So many ozzie parents are waking up tired. For many families,
sleep issues and bedtime struggles can take over your life
long after your children move beyond the tough newborn and
toddless sleep phase. A report from the Royal Children's Hospital,
Melbourne reveals almost half of children aged five to seventeen
years of a problem with their sleeping pattern, and one
(05:47):
quarter have trouble getting to sleep. If you're one of
the many parents stuck in that vicious cycle, it feels
relentless because when children can't sleep, parents don't sleep either.
Whether it's your school age child suddenly developing bedtime anxiety
or a teenager who's up all night and sleeping all day,
(06:09):
sleepish whoes can be stressful for the entire household. The
impact extends far beyond just feeling tired. Sleep deprivation pushes
our patients and can affect everything from our ability to
function at work to our physical and mental health. We
spoke to doctor Jen Walsh, the director of the Center
for Sleep Science at the University of Western Australia, and
(06:31):
asked just how many hours sleep kids should be getting
once they start school and whether there's a magic age
they should be sleeping through the night.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Unfortunately, there's no magic aid that kids will sleep through
the night. However, generally we expect that certainly by the
time kids are at school that they're probably not waking
up the rest of the house when they're waking up. Generally,
with a school age child, we would be expecting them
to get somewhere between nine and twelve hours of sleep
(07:01):
per night.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Dr Walsh says having a good bedtime routine and sticking
to it can be crucial.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
There's actually a lot of evidence around the benefits of
those bedtime routines. There's going to be variability, but generally
it may involve a snack, a bath and brush teeth.
Then there might be toilet and then a story and
then maybe some cuddles. What the evidence shows is that
if kids are following those routines, they have increased total
(07:32):
sleep time. The time that it takes to fall asleep
is decreased, and the number of awakenings across the night
decreases and the duration of which they're awake at night
also decreases. The more nights of the week that these
routines are followed, the better the outcome that you see. However,
I should say these caveats there in terms of different
(07:55):
cultures deal with sleep, and in some cultures we know
that sharing a bed is really important. The bedtime routine
and settling during the night may look different in a
household where bed sharing or root sharing is occurring.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Dr Walsh says having an honest conversation with your child
before it's time for bed can also help.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I think that probably a lot of parents underestimate the
intelligence of their children and the ability of their children
to take on board education. So being able to explain
to the child that this is really important that you
go to bed now. Sleep is really important if you
want to grow up and be healthy, you need to sleep.
(08:37):
This is now sleep time, very shortly of your mummy
sleep time, and I need to stay in bed in
order to go to sleep.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
And you can.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Explain to kids that by disturbing everyone else's sleep that
it's not good for them either. And the next day
mummy's going to be a bit grumpy if she keeps
getting woken up during the nighttime. But having a conversation
with a child during the day rather than at bedtime,
can be really helpful. The child is generally a bit
more receptive to it during the day. I suppose for
(09:07):
kids also that have those worrying thoughts at nighttime, having
that conversation, Look, our brains are tired, now, they need
to go to sleep. Now's not the time to be
thinking about these worries. We're not going to come up
with a good solution. At this time of night, so
let's talk about it tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Dr Walsh says children who wake up too early every
morning can also be a challenge.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
We live in a land where there it's plentiful light
early in the morning, especially in summer. You know, is
it too brighten their room? Is it noisy? So is
there anything you can do in that regard? You can
try and move the bed time forward and backwards and
see whether that can be beneficial. And then I suppose
the other thing is that, especially when the kids are
(09:54):
a little bit older, you know, you tell them that
this is not the time to be awake. Everyone else
is needing to be asleep. You have to stay quietly
in bed or in your room, whatever strategy you come
up with. And if they can't read the time, you
can get different clocks that have the faces that turn
different colors, and so they know if it's blue, they
(10:15):
need to be in bed, if it's orange, they're allowed
to be out of bed, but not out of the room.
And then if it's green, they're allowed out of the room.
Something like that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
So what happens when they hit the teenage years and
you can't drag them out of bed, we spoke to
clinical psychologists doctor Ceeli Richardson from the Center for Sleep
Science at the University of Wa, who says there is
a reason why teenagers can't get to sleep at night
and also have trouble waking up.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
In terms of the body clock changes that we see
from the onset of puberty. We see that there's this
delay in melotonin rhythms as well as rhythms of core
body temperature, which mean that young people want to be
falling asleep later and waking up later. This is compounded
by the change in the sleep pressure system, where teenagers
take longer to build up feelings of sleepiness across the day,
so they might get to a socially acceptable bedtime and
(11:04):
not really feel physically sleepy enough or ready enough to
initiate sleep at that time time. The general rule of
thumb is that most teenagers will need between eight to
ten hours of sleep, but there is a huge amount
of individual difference here, as there is right across the lifespan.
So teenagers are not lazy for wanting to kind of
sleep in or for being hard to kind of get
out of bed in the morning. It really is these
(11:27):
kind of two big physical sleep changes that occur that
are driving them to have that kind of sleep pattern.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
We ask doctor Richardson where the teenagers who are not
getting enough sleep can play catch up on the weekend.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
It's not possible to fully catch up on sleep, and
actually what we see if you're regularly sleeping in is
this can actually worsen the sleep problems in the long
term because it has the effect of further delaying circadian
rhythm timing and kind of making the problem worse. Ideally,
parents should be encouraging teenagers to keep any sleepins on
the weekend to very minimal, so maybe only having a
(11:59):
difference of about an hour or so between your weekday
and weekend sleep.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Dr Richardson says, when it comes to screen time before bed,
it's complicated.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
It does seem to be an association between technology use
and sleep, but it's much more complicated than most of
us are sort of led to believe. So, based on
some recent evidence of studies that have been conducted, it
appears that there's actually relatively weak evidence for the link
between blue light and also increased arousal as a result
of technology use and sleep in young people, But there
was much more consistent evidence that sleep displacement and nighttime
(12:32):
sleep disruption might be what's kind of underpinning this link
between technology and sleep. So, for example, if young people
are getting very engrossed in what they're engaging in online
and this is inadvertently making them go to bed later,
or if they're being waken up during the middle of
the night through text messages from their friends, then this
is what we think is kind of really leading to
this relationship between technology use and sleep. But there's also
(12:54):
a greater appreciation that young people might actually be using
technology as a bit of a sleep aid, and they
might be using technology as a bit of a coping mechanism. So,
for example, young people who have poor difficulty with sleep
might be using technology to fill in time in the
evening until they feel enough, or they might actually be
using technology as a bit of an emotion regulation tool
that helps them to wind down and prepare for sleep
(13:16):
as well. So having blanket rules around technology is not
the best idea for every teenager, and I'd really encourage
parents and health professionals to have more of an open
and kind of curious discussion with young people around what
function their technology use serves, and then you can work
out a strategy collaboratively.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Dr Richardson says, if your teenager is still struggling to sleep,
it might be worth a chat with your GP.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I guess as the first starting point that most people
try to implement good sleep hygiene practices to begin with.
And so if you've put a lot of these strategies
in place and you're not really seeing benefit to your sleep,
this could also be a really good scientist seek professional help.
You can seek help from a sleep psychologist such as myself.
We have much more powerful strategies in our toolkits than
just these sleep hygiene strategies that are commonly known about,
(14:01):
and we often see improvement in people sleep in only
just a few short weeks as well. Mostly these strategies
tend to target helpful behaviors and ways of thinking about
sleep that keep the sleep problem going in the long term.
And so these sleep treatments are really very effective, and
so I would encourage young people and families not to
persist with poor sleep longer than you need to before
seeking professional help.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
So, if you're one of the exhausted, bleary eyed parents
doing their best to get a good night's sleep for
you and your child, know that you are not alone.
If you're struggling to sleep and want to know more,
check out Mamma MEA's women's health podcast, well hosted by
Claire Murphy and doctor Mariam Our next topic is all
about sleep, including insomnia, sleep disorders, meditation, and the different
(14:48):
types of rest. Well drops every Thursday. We'll put a
link in our show notes. Thanks for taking the time
to feed your mind with us today. The Cookie is
produced by me Sashatannic and Tarlie Blackman, with audio production
by Lou Hill.
You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Mumma Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Hey, I'm Sashatannic. This is Muma MIA's twice daily news podcast,
The Quickie. Has bedtime turned into a nightly struggle for
you and your child who just can't sleep. So many
parents and kids are waking up tired. We're taking a
look at how hard it is for households across Australia
to get a good night's rest. Before we get there.
(00:42):
He's Tarlie Blackman with the latest from The Quickie newsroom
for Tuesday August five.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thanks Sasha. New protest laws may be introduced or repealed
after the pro Palestine rally across the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Despite police opposition, the Supreme Court allowed the protest to
go ahead, prompting concern from New South Wales Premier Chris Mens,
who says future bridge protests must not become the norm.
While not ruling out new laws, Minn said any changes
(01:08):
must be considered carefully. Federal Opposition leader Susan Lee urged
tougher action, warning of major city disruptions. Prime Minister Anthony
Alberenezi backed peaceful protests as a democratic riot, saying Australians
want people to stop killing each other. They want peace
and security, they don't want conflict brought here. Similar pro
Palestine protests have been held globally, including London, Berlin and Athens,
(01:33):
often calling for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid and an end
to Israeli military action in Gaza. Protest organizers say more
rallies will take place nationwide on August twenty four, but
deny plans to march on the bridge again soon. Christy
Barrett will make history as the first woman to lead
the Australian Federal Police after being appointed the agency's ninth commissioner.
(01:56):
Barrett's twenty five year career has seen her rise from
a young administrative assistant in Melbourne to a seasoned law
enforcement leader involved in major investigations including the Balley bombings
and deployments to the Solomon Islands. She will take over
for Rhese Kershel, who is stepping down in early October
after six years in the role, citing that toll the
(02:16):
job has taken on family life and his desire to
spend more time with loved ones. Barrett says one of
her main priorities will be ensuring the AFP has a
healthy work for supporting officers both on and off duty
as they protect the nation. Video has been released showing
convicted killer Aaron Patterson speaking with detectives at her dining
table nearly a month after her murder of conviction. Another
(02:38):
clip shows Patterson disposing of a food dehydrator at a
Victorian rubbish tip, and both videos were key evanans during
her eleven week trial in Morewell. On July seven, Aaron
Patterson was found guilty of murdering Don and Gale Patterson
and Heather Wilkinson, and of the attempted murder of Heather's husband,
Ian Wilkinson. The court heard she deliberately served the victims
(02:59):
beef Wellington's laced with deadly deathcap mushrooms at her home
in July twenty twenty three. She now faces life in
prison and will return to court for sentencing. Starting August twenty,
the US will launch a pilot program allowing consular officers
to require bonds for up to twenty three thousand, two
hundred AUD for certain tourists and business visa applicants. The
(03:21):
program targets visitors from countries with high rates of visa
overstays or insufficient screening information. Applicants may be required to
pay bonds of approximately seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty
dollars fifteen thousand, five hundred dollars or twenty three thousand,
two hundred dollars AUD, with fifteen thousand, five hundred AUD
generally expected. The program will run for about one year.
(03:44):
This move is part of broader efforts under President Donald
Trump's administration to curb illegal immigration, including previous travel bands
on nineteen countries. A similar program started in late twenty twenty,
but was not fully implemented due to the pandemic. Australia's
beloved kids show Bluey may offer more than just entertainment,
with experts saying it helps children develop important resilience skills
(04:08):
sq Universe. The mental health practitioner Kelly Bowl analyzed one
hundred and fifty episodes and found that half inquded lessons
on coping and emotional strength, often taught by Blue's parents.
She says resilience helps us handle life's challenges, and building
it in childhood supports mental health throughout life. The research
team encourages parents to watch alongside their kids and discuss
(04:31):
how to apply these lessons. So next time your child
asks for just one more episode, you can feel pretty
good about saying.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yes, thanks Charlie. Next, we're talking about kids' sleep issues
and how tough it can be to get a good
night's sleep. Is bedtime a nightly battle for you and
your child? Endless books, trips to the bathroom or glasses
of water, the constant coaxing, calming, negotiating, and still they
(05:02):
just won't go to sleep. Perhaps you've woken up with
a start in the middle of the night to find
your five year old eyes balling you in the darkness
and that sinking feeling that you've just lost the next
two hours of precious rest. Or maybe you have a
super early waker. Like clockwork, they appear in your room
at four thirty every morning before the first signs of light.
(05:25):
So many ozzie parents are waking up tired. For many families,
sleep issues and bedtime struggles can take over your life
long after your children move beyond the tough newborn and
toddless sleep phase. A report from the Royal Children's Hospital,
Melbourne reveals almost half of children aged five to seventeen
years of a problem with their sleeping pattern, and one
(05:47):
quarter have trouble getting to sleep. If you're one of
the many parents stuck in that vicious cycle, it feels
relentless because when children can't sleep, parents don't sleep either.
Whether it's your school age child suddenly developing bedtime anxiety
or a teenager who's up all night and sleeping all day,
(06:09):
sleepish whoes can be stressful for the entire household. The
impact extends far beyond just feeling tired. Sleep deprivation pushes
our patients and can affect everything from our ability to
function at work to our physical and mental health. We
spoke to doctor Jen Walsh, the director of the Center
for Sleep Science at the University of Western Australia, and
(06:31):
asked just how many hours sleep kids should be getting
once they start school and whether there's a magic age
they should be sleeping through the night.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Unfortunately, there's no magic aid that kids will sleep through
the night. However, generally we expect that certainly by the
time kids are at school that they're probably not waking
up the rest of the house when they're waking up. Generally,
with a school age child, we would be expecting them
to get somewhere between nine and twelve hours of sleep
(07:01):
per night.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Dr Walsh says having a good bedtime routine and sticking
to it can be crucial.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
There's actually a lot of evidence around the benefits of
those bedtime routines. There's going to be variability, but generally
it may involve a snack, a bath and brush teeth.
Then there might be toilet and then a story and
then maybe some cuddles. What the evidence shows is that
if kids are following those routines, they have increased total
(07:32):
sleep time. The time that it takes to fall asleep
is decreased, and the number of awakenings across the night
decreases and the duration of which they're awake at night
also decreases. The more nights of the week that these
routines are followed, the better the outcome that you see. However,
I should say these caveats there in terms of different
(07:55):
cultures deal with sleep, and in some cultures we know
that sharing a bed is really important. The bedtime routine
and settling during the night may look different in a
household where bed sharing or root sharing is occurring.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Dr Walsh says having an honest conversation with your child
before it's time for bed can also help.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I think that probably a lot of parents underestimate the
intelligence of their children and the ability of their children
to take on board education. So being able to explain
to the child that this is really important that you
go to bed now. Sleep is really important if you
want to grow up and be healthy, you need to sleep.
(08:37):
This is now sleep time, very shortly of your mummy
sleep time, and I need to stay in bed in
order to go to sleep.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
And you can.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Explain to kids that by disturbing everyone else's sleep that
it's not good for them either. And the next day
mummy's going to be a bit grumpy if she keeps
getting woken up during the nighttime. But having a conversation
with a child during the day rather than at bedtime,
can be really helpful. The child is generally a bit
more receptive to it during the day. I suppose for
(09:07):
kids also that have those worrying thoughts at nighttime, having
that conversation, Look, our brains are tired, now, they need
to go to sleep. Now's not the time to be
thinking about these worries. We're not going to come up
with a good solution. At this time of night, so
let's talk about it tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Dr Walsh says children who wake up too early every
morning can also be a challenge.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
We live in a land where there it's plentiful light
early in the morning, especially in summer. You know, is
it too brighten their room? Is it noisy? So is
there anything you can do in that regard? You can
try and move the bed time forward and backwards and
see whether that can be beneficial. And then I suppose
the other thing is that, especially when the kids are
(09:54):
a little bit older, you know, you tell them that
this is not the time to be awake. Everyone else
is needing to be asleep. You have to stay quietly
in bed or in your room, whatever strategy you come
up with. And if they can't read the time, you
can get different clocks that have the faces that turn
different colors, and so they know if it's blue, they
(10:15):
need to be in bed, if it's orange, they're allowed
to be out of bed, but not out of the room.
And then if it's green, they're allowed out of the room.
Something like that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
So what happens when they hit the teenage years and
you can't drag them out of bed, we spoke to
clinical psychologists doctor Ceeli Richardson from the Center for Sleep
Science at the University of Wa, who says there is
a reason why teenagers can't get to sleep at night
and also have trouble waking up.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
In terms of the body clock changes that we see
from the onset of puberty. We see that there's this
delay in melotonin rhythms as well as rhythms of core
body temperature, which mean that young people want to be
falling asleep later and waking up later. This is compounded
by the change in the sleep pressure system, where teenagers
take longer to build up feelings of sleepiness across the day,
so they might get to a socially acceptable bedtime and
(11:04):
not really feel physically sleepy enough or ready enough to
initiate sleep at that time time. The general rule of
thumb is that most teenagers will need between eight to
ten hours of sleep, but there is a huge amount
of individual difference here, as there is right across the lifespan.
So teenagers are not lazy for wanting to kind of
sleep in or for being hard to kind of get
out of bed in the morning. It really is these
(11:27):
kind of two big physical sleep changes that occur that
are driving them to have that kind of sleep pattern.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
We ask doctor Richardson where the teenagers who are not
getting enough sleep can play catch up on the weekend.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
It's not possible to fully catch up on sleep, and
actually what we see if you're regularly sleeping in is
this can actually worsen the sleep problems in the long
term because it has the effect of further delaying circadian
rhythm timing and kind of making the problem worse. Ideally,
parents should be encouraging teenagers to keep any sleepins on
the weekend to very minimal, so maybe only having a
(11:59):
difference of about an hour or so between your weekday
and weekend sleep.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Dr Richardson says, when it comes to screen time before bed,
it's complicated.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
It does seem to be an association between technology use
and sleep, but it's much more complicated than most of
us are sort of led to believe. So, based on
some recent evidence of studies that have been conducted, it
appears that there's actually relatively weak evidence for the link
between blue light and also increased arousal as a result
of technology use and sleep in young people, But there
was much more consistent evidence that sleep displacement and nighttime
(12:32):
sleep disruption might be what's kind of underpinning this link
between technology and sleep. So, for example, if young people
are getting very engrossed in what they're engaging in online
and this is inadvertently making them go to bed later,
or if they're being waken up during the middle of
the night through text messages from their friends, then this
is what we think is kind of really leading to
this relationship between technology use and sleep. But there's also
(12:54):
a greater appreciation that young people might actually be using
technology as a bit of a sleep aid, and they
might be using technology as a bit of a coping mechanism. So,
for example, young people who have poor difficulty with sleep
might be using technology to fill in time in the
evening until they feel enough, or they might actually be
using technology as a bit of an emotion regulation tool
that helps them to wind down and prepare for sleep
(13:16):
as well. So having blanket rules around technology is not
the best idea for every teenager, and I'd really encourage
parents and health professionals to have more of an open
and kind of curious discussion with young people around what
function their technology use serves, and then you can work
out a strategy collaboratively.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Dr Richardson says, if your teenager is still struggling to sleep,
it might be worth a chat with your GP.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I guess as the first starting point that most people
try to implement good sleep hygiene practices to begin with.
And so if you've put a lot of these strategies
in place and you're not really seeing benefit to your sleep,
this could also be a really good scientist seek professional help.
You can seek help from a sleep psychologist such as myself.
We have much more powerful strategies in our toolkits than
just these sleep hygiene strategies that are commonly known about,
(14:01):
and we often see improvement in people sleep in only
just a few short weeks as well. Mostly these strategies
tend to target helpful behaviors and ways of thinking about
sleep that keep the sleep problem going in the long term.
And so these sleep treatments are really very effective, and
so I would encourage young people and families not to
persist with poor sleep longer than you need to before
seeking professional help.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
So, if you're one of the exhausted, bleary eyed parents
doing their best to get a good night's sleep for
you and your child, know that you are not alone.
If you're struggling to sleep and want to know more,
check out Mamma MEA's women's health podcast, well hosted by
Claire Murphy and doctor Mariam Our next topic is all
about sleep, including insomnia, sleep disorders, meditation, and the different
(14:48):
types of rest. Well drops every Thursday. We'll put a
link in our show notes. Thanks for taking the time
to feed your mind with us today. The Cookie is
produced by me Sashatannic and Tarlie Blackman, with audio production
by Lou Hill.
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